Thursday, November 19, 2015

Thank you everyone who took part in the Blog Hop for World Castle Publishing. We have announced the winner of the Kindle Fire on the rafflecopter.
And now to announce the winner of an e-book copy of Destria Waves...

Kathy Osborn

I will send you an e-mail shortly.

Please come by again for more giveaways and news about upcoming releases.
Happy Holidays
-Lily

Luckily, we had chosen a hiding spot far
enough away that when we moved the grass away, I could see a tall woman with
long grey hair hanging down her back and a very white dress that was too
youthful for her. She looked like she at least in her eighties, but her back
was so rigid and straight that she looked intimidating no less. She was turned
to the side so I could only see her profile, but I saw the dark purple of her
eyes. They stared at the man lying in front of her, her hands shaking at her
sides. Her skin was weathered and worn, but I could tell she was once a great
beauty.

“That’s Logan,” Mason gasped next to me,
tightening his grip around my hand.

I’d been so focused on the older woman; I
hadn’t noticed the other man standing next to the woman. In the split second
before I leaped out of the brambles to help the man on the ground, Mason
wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me against him. “He’s already
dead, Ana. Do you have your phone?”

I had left my phone on the charger. “No.”

“Damn it.” Mason rarely cursed, but when he
did, his voice sounded rather demonic.

“I already rejuvenated,” Logan said simply as
he slicked his short blonde hair back with a large sweaty hand. He withdrew a
knife from his slacks and then bent down so he could slice into the dead man’s
skin. Because the man was lying on his side facing away from us, I wasn’t sure
how old he was. “We cannot delay any longer. You’re growing too weak.”

The woman pursed her lips together but didn’t
say anything. “He’s already dead. What if his soul has already moved on?”

Logan paused and pressed a hand to the dead
man’s chest. “It is not too late.”

Mason cringed beside me as Charlotte sank to
her knees in front of the man. She cradled his head in her arms and if I hadn’t
known better, I would’ve thought she was his mother. Ever so slowly, she
pressed her lips to his and attacked his lips with what looked like a violent
kiss. But it was different somehow.

I’d
never been kissed, at least, not that I could remember. But the way she sucked
her cheeks in and refused to look away from him didn’t look natural.

I
hadn’t noticed before, but her dress exposed her back and between her shoulder
blades, I saw two dark marks on either side of her shoulder blades. I watched
in strange fascination as my heart beat intensely in my chest. Instantly and
with a great whoosh of air, two dark black wings jutted out from the two dark
marks on her back.

She
cried out, releasing the man beneath her. Gripping her face in her hands, her
skin was covered in a crystal looking fluid that spread out until her entire
body was covered in its sticky presence.

I could feel Mason on the verge of fainting
behind me, but I wasn’t sure we could sneak away as easily as we had
approached. And even if we could fight them off, they had a knife and who knows
what else?

“Just close your eyes,” I suggested.

“No.”

For several, long minutes, I remained half
crouched half kneeling pressed against Mason who thankfully had stopped making
a choking noise in the back of his throat.

Before my eyes, her skin began to gain
firmness, the wrinkles receding back into her face. Her long hair gleamed with
blonde until there was no trace of gray. She looked like she was in her early
twenties now. The sticky substance dissolved into her skin and as she stood up,
her wings gracefully folded back into her shoulder blades. Unlike the woman in
my visions who had beautiful white wings, the monster in front of us had
ghastly wings that reminded me of rotting flesh.

She surveyed the man with slight contempt but
before she could speak, the man crumpled into dust, while a white fluid leaked
from the wound in his arm where Logan had cut him.

“Good thing you didn’t want to use him,”
Logan said, as he licked his lips. He was facing us so I couldn’t get a good
glimpse of his back so I could try to make out whether he had wings or not too.

“He was too weak for our purposes.”

Logan gave her a reprimanding look.
“Eventually, we’ll have to start only taking what we need and reserve the rest
of their soul.’

The woman smiled as she wiped the corner of
her mouth although her face was clean. “Perhaps.”

“Do you see the butterflies?” Mason asked.

I shook my head. There was nothing but the a
puddle of white fluid where the man’s body had once been.